


Conversations With Patronizing Jerks

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Community: intoabar, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emperor Palpatine and the United States meet in a bar. Alfred's not sure about the company, but at least the bar snacks are nice. Pity he has no clue what they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations With Patronizing Jerks

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Into A Bar challenge, for the prompt "Alfred Jones/America and Emperor Palpatine meet in a bar." It is pretty much exactly that.
> 
> The difference between Nation names and human names is that Alfred uses human names for people he knowspersonally and Nation names for people he's not.

Arthur's been missing for almost twenty minutes now, having disappeared up the stairs to the second story of the bar. Alfred puts away his phone, which at least is still working, swings his feet uncomfortably for a moment, then braces them on the legs of the bar stool and takes another of the... things in the dishes.

They're obviously bar snacks, that is. And they taste pretty good, too, a nice combination of salty and nutty. They have a fleshy texture that sort of reminds him of fruit. Not that they taste like fruit. He has no fucking clue what they are. Nut-fruits?

He also has practically no fucking clue where he is, though, so that works. Well, he's in a bar. That much is obvious. And judging by the marble and all the steel that's been polished to mirror shininess, the expensive looking cloth on the employees, and something indefinable about their manners interacting with the customers, it's a pretty ritzy place. The kind of place he might end up in after a conference or during diplomatic talks, not the kind of place he'd go for fun. He thinks the upper story, which has its own entrance and bar, might be cheaper and, well, trashier, so basically more to his taste. The upper story also contains Arthur and apparently laudanum, though,so he'll pass.

He's not sure where Arthur decided to take them for drinks after the meeting, but it's not somewhere normal. The prickling, numb emptiness in the back of his head, where he should feel his country and all of his billions of people, makes that clear. Plus, you don't get to normal bars by discovering doors in broom closets, excitedly exclaiming that you've found the place again, and walking through them.

Also the lady sitting down the bar from him is either a seriously dedicated cosplayer or an alien, what with the bright purple tails coming off of the back of her head, and he's pretty sure she'd be attracting a few more stares if she was a cosplayer and not something entirely normal for wherever the hell this bar is.

Then there are the two guys arguing in the corner. One of them's wearing an honest to god crown. With jewels. And they're both carrying broadswords, the serious kind – he's never fought with one himself but practically all the older countries have them, whether they have them hung ceremoniously on their walls like France or stashed absently under their beds like Korea. So he's seen enough to judge that the swords don't look like cheap reconstructions.

_Then_ there's the dog, or maybe wolf, sitting on a bar stool a few seats down from him and lapping from a bowl of amber liquid, and really, Alfred could go on for a long time because every single one of the other patrons has something weird about them, even if it's just, like, clothing and not basic anatomy.

The back of his neck prickles. There's someone watching him. There's been someone watching him for the past hour, though, so he just ignores it and takes another of the little bar snacks.

Then there isn't someone watching him, there's someone pulling out the stool next to him and sitting down and saying, “Hello.”

Alfred turns. He eyes the guy a little bit, up and down. “Uh,” he says. “Isn't the shadowy cloak deal a little outdated?” Okay, so the cloak's made of expensive cloth, either silk or a close imitation on the lining and something he has no clue about on the outside, but _still_. Underneath he seems to be wearing some kind of fancy robes but Alfred can't see a lot.

He tilts his head up to smile a little, a look that does a wonderful job of encapsulating condescension and paternalism and 'are you sure you should be here alone' all at once. Alfred's bosses could take lessons from this guy.  _Arthur_ could take lessons from this guy. Oh, and his eyes are glowing yellow, that's kind of weird too. “Perhaps where you're from. They're one of the trappings of my order.”

His order? Alfred has this urge to ask, but what with the yellow eyes and the veins showing in his skin and wow, what the hell is up with his skin in general? Anyway, what with the general science fiction vibe of the place he has a suspicion that this guy is in the science fiction  _villain_ category and so probably Alfred should not ask about his order unless he wants to hear about baby killing and blood drinking.

“Oh, hey, you know where this place is? That'd be real helpful,” he says instead. His southerner is twigging him and he almost ends the sentence with sir before he slaps down that side of his brain, because no, dammit, patronizing possibly-evil rich guys don't get to boss him around. He's the United States of America, the leader of the free world, and no one is better than him. His spine straightens just thinking about his country.

“Are you lost?” The concern is very very fake but it's very very well-faked. Seriously.  _Lessons_ . Alfred kind of wants to bite his head off for it, though, because seriously he's three hundred years old, not thirteen, and even his body looks solidly twenty-five at youngest.

That would be rude, though, and he does want an answer to his question, so he laughs instead, hoping to defuse the situation. “Nah! My friend brought me here, but he was already a little drunk.” Arthur is  _always_ a little drunk at UN summits, even Germany can't get him to stop sneaking in flasks. Alfred isn't sure why Germany bothers to try. Arthur's easier to deal with drunk. “Anyway he knew the place but he just sorta wandered off upstairs without explaining.”

“If you're in need of an escort home, I'm sure the bartender could provide it.”

Okay, that is it. Alfred thinks for two seconds about trying some tactful rendition of  _hey I'm not a kid_ but there's a simpler way of doing things and he's not feeling tactful. 

So instead, he sits up straight, meets yellow-eyes-and-cloak-guy's gaze with his own, and lets the facade of humanity, well, not  _drop_ exactly, if you drop yourself then you have to pick yourself back up and put the pieces together and that sucks, but he lets it slip a little bit. He opens the door a crack, just enough to show light through.

Or rather, just enough to show years through, centuries, and life – billions of human lives, the chattering voices and flashing images of their minds flowing into him and through him until death makes them fall abruptly, suddenly silent and dark forever.

He could go on, go into the gunfire and blood he was born in and the Nations he replaced and what it means to be an expansionist power and all that shit but cloak guy is leaning back on his stool with his eyes closed so Alfred thinks he's done enough. He quietly shuts the door in his head and thinks about leaving, but he likes the stupid bar snacks and Arthur is probably still drinking upstairs and maybe doing opium and someone should be here to haul him back when he gets drunk or high (not that Alfred is there with him  _alone_ , god no, but Francois is drinking too and Alfred has no idea if Kiku and Arthur have that sort of drag your drunken unconscious ass back to your apartment relationship) so instead he takes another handful of pink fruit-nuts and waits.

“What are you?” the guy says eventually, voice gone suddenly, weirdly hoarse. His expression's weird, too.

“The United States of America!” Alfred chirps, turning back to offer a hand, which the guy just stares at. Maybe they don't shake hands where he's from? Alfred puts his hand down once he's sure the guy's not going to take it. “Established 1776, there was a war and everything, but I was around before that, just not  _official_ like.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“It's easy. There's this country, the United States of America – you haven't heard of me, have you?” He's kind of disappointed, but hey,  _aliens_ and dudes from the middle ages. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise.

“I can't say that I have. I'm a resident of the Galactic Empire.”

“Must be a different galaxy.” Which explains everything. Alfred jiggles his knee absently as he talks. “Anyway, there's this country and I'm its anthropomorphic personification. Simple, really.”

“Fascinating,” he says after a moment. “Were you created, or did you simply appear?”  
“Second one. I just remember being a little kid in this forest, wandering around, and then I came across some people.” He doesn't like thinking about who those people were or what happened to them, though, so he just moves on. “As far as I know that's how most of us appear, except Korea says one of his parents was a bear or something which I guess isn't that much weirder than any of us and Greece had a mother, Ancient Greece. I'm not sure if she, like,  _gave birth_ to him or just raised him, though.”

“You were a child at this time? But old enough to be mobile.”

“Yeah.” This is getting actually creepy even if he's quit being a patronizing jerk so Alfred lifts his eyebrows. “You getting to something? Hey, you never told me your name.” Not that he told him his, but his name is private, he doesn't give it out to just anyone. Especially when just anyone isn't one of his citizens.

“Me? Of course, I was simply curious. I am Emperor Palpatine.”

“Emperor?” Alfred says, and makes as if he's suitably impressed. But in the back of his mind, he's thinking, he knows about emperors. He knows they're like kings, which he  _ definitely doesn't _ like, and he knows what Yao's told him about them – that they think they're gods, and sometimes they make people  _ treat _ them like gods, and even at best they're always hungry, for land or for money or for other things. If Yao sounded a little in love with some of his, well, he's spent thousands of years as an empire and he was talking about his own leaders.

But Alfred's a Republic, and even if he might have had his own days of being always hungry those are over. And he definitely isn't a fan of autocratic one man rulers, particularly other people's rulers, particularly other people's rulers who are members of mysterious cloak wearing orders and look like they're probably evil and come to think of it shouldn't he have  _ noticed _ that he's talking to a foreign head of state? This place is seriously weird and it feels like he's not even a Nation inside.

“Oh, I'm only a human,” Emperor Palpatine says with a brilliantly timed self-deprecrating laugh. “I'm sure I'm nothing compared to yourself.”

Alfred is supposed to smile and demur and let him go on to whatever point he's going to make, probably something about power (now he realizes what the weird look on his face just after he felt what Alfred is was, that was hunger, too, just like Yao said) but he really just wants to go home.

Screw Arthur, Kiku can haul him back to his place.

“Yeah, you are,” he says and flashes a smile. Then he gets up and walks away. He walks past the dog and the alien woman and what looks like a giant centipede at a table using a laptop and to the door.

When he's through it he's back in the broom closet, and in the back of his head, like millions of stars first lighting into existence, are his people again.


End file.
